Stories

Sotheby’s sold a rare and storied Roman statue of Aphrodite in London for a record price of £18.6 million ($24.6 million). Sotheby’s says the price is a record for any ancient marble sculpture sold at auction. The work was offered in a single lot sale with a low estimate of £2 million.

A new record price has been set for the Polish-French artist Balthus (also called Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) at Yongle’s Fall auction in Beijing. The Cat in the Mirror III from 1977 sold for 166,750,000 Yuan or $26.19 million. 

Bonhams sale of the collection of Amalia de Schulthess totaled $15.2 million in New York today. The bulk of the value of the collection lay in two works, a Magritte from 1937 that had not been seen in public for seven decades and a piece of furniture-cum-sculpture by Alberto Giacometti. 

New York’s November auctions totaled $2.54 billion across the sales of the Macklowe and Cox collections and the re-defined categories of Modern, 20th Century and now present-day art. This is the highest total for a November auction cycle in New York.

Sotheby’s final night of sales capped off the astonishing November 2021 auction season bracketing a wild evening of record-setting sales and a legendary taste maker’s market-thrilling divestiture around the oddest rare book and manuscript single-lot auction ever staged.

Did Ken Griffin have a secret advantage in his bidding? The sale of one of the 13 copies of the first printing of the United States Constitution is worth mentioning here simply because of the fascinating bidding dynamics that played out.

Although still dwarfed by its competitors, each season Phillips Auction House makes progress toward growth. Wednesday night’s all-time high Evening sale total crept up on the team at Phillips which is probably more of an indication of their growth than the absolute number.

Success had many fathers at Sotheby’s last night once the 676.1 million first part of the Macklowe sale was over. The company’s owner, Patrick Drahi, took Harry Macklowe  up to the empty rostrum to pose for a few celebratory pictures together.

“That was a managed white glove sale,” one of Christie’s specialists said to her colleague as they walked out of the Christie’s hybrid salesroom-livestream studio.